Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

-- Lao Tzu, philosopher and poet

Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.

- Oprah Winfrey; media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

So I’m into men now, even though they can be frightening. I want a schedule-keeping, waking-up-early, wallet-carrying, non-Velcro-shoe-wearing man.

- Mindy Kaling; comedian and author of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson; essayist, lecturer, poet

Women kill me. They really do. I don’t mean I’m oversexed or anything like that — although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They’re always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle.

- J. D. Salinger; author

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

- Mark Twain; author

I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves. 

- Mary Wollstonecraft; writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights

Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.

- George Carlin; comedian, writer, and philosopher 

Two things a woman should always be -- classy and fabulous. 

- Coco Chanel, designer and business woman

Two things a woman should always be – classy and fabulous. - See more at: http://sippinglemonade.com/an-etsy-story-grace-and-lace/#sthash.zSzZOjDF.dpuf

Two things a woman should always be – classy and fabulous. - See more at: http://sippinglemonade.com/an-etsy-story-grace-and-lace/#sthash.zSzZOjDF.dpuf

The first cup moistens my lips and throat. The second cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren entrails but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration - all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither. 

- Lu Tung, poet

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the word's end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.

- Willa Cather; writer, "Le Lavandou" 1902

Keep on going, and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down. 

- Charles Kettering; inventor, engineer, and businessman

That's the one nice thing about being a dork about men: you can sometimes play it off as restrained and classy.

- Mindy Kaling, actor and comedian, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

We are all a little weird and life is a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

- Dr. Seuss, writer, cartoonist, and poet

This is the difference between dating and marriage right? I mean you go out on a date with a guy and he picks his nose, you don't go out on another date. You're married to a guy and hi picks his nose..."You know he has a heart of gold, don't touch the fruitcake!" Right? You find a way to be happy with what's happened.

- Dan Gilbert, professor of psychology, author of Stumbling on Happiness, The Surprising Science of Happiness

Just because it's Christmas

Beautiful Aurelia, I’ve come here with a view to ask you to marriage me. I know I seems an insane person because I hardly knows you…but sometimes things are so transparency…they don’t need evidential proof. And I can inhabit with you or you can inhabit with me in England. Of course I don’t expecting you to be as foolish as me, and of course I prediction you say no...but it’s Christmas and I just wanted to...check...

 - Jaime/Colin Firth in "Love Actually" in (broken) Portuguese

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

-- Howard Thurman; educator and civil rights leader.

A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

-- Albert Einstein; physicist

To know what you wanted and pursue it, perhaps with great determination, but without impatience. To enjoy the event as it unfolded, whether it was a journey to see a friend or the impossibly slow, impossibly wonderful act of falling in love.

-- paraphrased from Sharon Shinn's Angel Seeker  

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

-- Neil Gaiman; author